These Small Hours
by Invariant
Summary: "Even her skin reacts to the promise he's become". A deeper look into the POlivia relationship in the 2026 time loop of 3x22. Not exactly a post 3x22 given it happens within the choices within that timeline. Really, it's T  so, rated M to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. I just like breaking them out for playtime. **

**Spoilers: The Day We Died. This fic takes place inside the time loop of 2026. It's a little ficlet of what P and O's life could have been like leading up to that particular future. **

**I was told I'd never do a marriage fic, or a lemony-limey taste of tantalizing goodness, so I decided to wager that bet. As my last fic, this is all the same story, but broken down into chapters to make it more easily readable. Cause, like always, it ends up being longer then I'd intended. **

**This is dedicated to all my fans. Especially Eliays. You're such a sweetheart and you make publishing these worth it. ;)**

* * *

><p>There's hot breath on the back of her neck, between her shoulder-blades, falling in waves of contentment over the thin cotton of the shirt that she's claimed for herself.<p>

This is what she's grown use to, at three in the morning, the emanation of his peace rolling over her upper back, the segment of her body that he buries his face in when he's pressed up and behind her.

He deserves the sleep, she thinks, feeling the splendid sore between her legs and the whisper of his hands on her hip bones, digging into her skin to balance them both above the height of this bed.

She feels her cheeks flush on the thought, because he's quite good at it, this love thing, this showing her his affection runs so much deeper then his surface thing. She feels it crash into her, every time he guides her through another toe-curling, mind-numbing stratosphere of bliss and heaven.

And she has an excuse now, to live in it, everyday, for the rest of their extreme and crazy lives.

He shifts a little, pushes himself into her just a little bit more, and she melts into his heat and the touch splayed across the side of her thigh. It's the metal of his wedding band, amid the warmth, two centimeters of cool silver evoking goosebumps on her sweat-dried flesh.

Every night, he touches her like this and every night, despite exhaustion, despite his physical diligence forcing her structureless, she stays awake to feel the excitement of her papillae from the caress of his left-hand.

Even her skin reacts to the promise he's become.

And she chose, two months ago, when he proclaimed on a car-ride that Bishop would suit her first name, to find amidst the darkness of their calling, the happy of hers he holds in blue flecks of gray eyes.

In his own way, he'd proposed, and catching him off guard, she'd said Olivia Bishop would look good on her office door.

And she was right, because it does. In the same way it looks good on her mail, and her name plate, and the love lines formed at the corner of his eyes.

Two weeks ago, she became his wife, and she was told her sister cried, and Astrid cried, and Ella clapped with Broyles when it was all over, but all she remembers is Peter's face, and the love written in each and every beautiful contour that dared her heart combust with the eight million degrees of his devotion.

That same devotion swam through her veins tonight, excited her neurons, came alive like nights before in greedy lips and hands and slick, ravenous bodies and bedsheets.

For the rest of her life, they are too each other a late night escape from the terrors of the world.

The only one left in the consequence of their yesteryear heroics.

Because that other universe is gone, and his father was blamed, and she'd held Peter for hours as he cried into her shoulder at the end the trial.

Their lives in the daylight thrive on real nightmares. It's only in here, that they dare dream out loud.

And so for six beautiful, somber hours like these, nothing exists but the feel of him against her and the glory he heats every cell in her blood with.

In this darkness, there are no monsters.

She puts her hands on his, on the thought, traces the outline of his band with her index finger and thumb and because she's so completely overwhelmed by the normalcy, the domestic tranquility these rare moments derive of, she scoots further back and into him, letting herself merely feel.

He's become part of her own biological make-up, an intricate part of her DNA; his life-giving morsels of heat, electricity and affection impelling the rest of her to stay alive and survive.

If only to experience her turn at providence, the kind of fortuitous all-over heaven-scent gratification his every ion titillates her with. As it's titillating her now, sending a low, deep pulse of heat straight through to her solar plexus, a growing impatience of a faint, always-there desire that burns in her lower abdomen.

In plenty more ways then one, she'll always need him.

She wriggles against him, and that pulse quickens, excitedly, and in response he groans, low and sexily, and she bites her lip because she knows she's just wrestled him, with the thrill of her hips against his torso, into her waking world.

"Again, Jesus Liv, you're going to kill me. I'm still not over the last time." his voice is hoarse, propelling the hot words into the top of her spine.

"I think I got a splinter from the headboard, I told you it was a crazy idea."

She laughs, low and it's a sound that resonates through the bedroom.

He's moving his hand now, up and down her thigh, leaving tickles of aftershock to dance on her skin.

And when it climbs up to her hip-bone, she catches her breath, closes her eyes. If he keeps this up, she won't be able to settle down her growing ache; the sister-desire of the urge he'd just satiated, an hour ago, before they'd fallen to the mattress with matching, raised heart-rates.

"Well I liked it."

She confirms, and feels him smile against her shoulder.

"Of course you did. You always like it. It's why you married me."

She turns into him, and his nose now nuzzles the crook of her neck.

"And see, here I thought I married you for your irresistible charm."

"More like my irresistible something else."

Her laugh is precocious, a happy, auditory impression that's become second nature in his air.

"You're right. I've been made."

She feigns, and he chuckles, in the kind of amusement forced from tarrying sleep.

"I don't blame you." he says into the pillow, his voice tickling her ear."I only married you so I could have my way with you whenever I wanted."

She wants to do more then smile,wants to grant him the praise he deserves for the humor, but she can only clench her lip, clamp down on the over stimulation of her body brought on by his words.

And lazily, he slides his hand up a little higher, caressing the soft skin of her belly, and his ring makes a home at the top of her navel. So she shifts, trying to steel her self-control, but it only moves his hand lower.

"I don't remember that bit in your vows."

She says, tampering her nerve-ends as he breathes her in.

"It was in the fine print." he responds, then for effect, "You'd know that if you followed the asterisk."

Again, she can't laugh, because there's goose-flesh where he's exciting her tissue. It's his desire too, that's seeping into her now, frustrating her still body into a rage of lust and need that's borne of his synchrony.

This deluge of his allure, always finds its way into her, and his inner under-coursing of things felt makes it hard, if not impossible, for her to remain self-contained.

On these nights, in these dark hours, his magnetism sends a primal kind through her, and the end is a primitive pleasure she's helpless against.

An unrelenting excitement that instigates her surrender.

There's moonlight stretching now, filtering through the blinds above their bed, and she catches her band in the nocturnal light. She admires the smooth silver, the way it shines against milky-peach in the emblem of her vow to him.

In here, this ring was her anchor, grounding her in a mind-set of genuine possibility. It reminds her that good things can appear in the clearing of darkness.

Years ago, he taught her this.

And now it's no longer just a Peter thing, it's a Bishop one.

"Hey, you okay?"

He's felt her re-direction, the turning over of her contemplation in the heavier quiet of the room and rigid pose of her body.

He can do this; read her, even in early-morning darkness with closed eyes and a sleep-hazed shroud, his every sense is keenly aware of her mood, her silence.

Then again, it's not silence at all when facing his stunning perception.

She can't hide in her own mind from his straight-through-to-her-bones deduction, his gene-specific discernment of her any constitution that knows only her, ascertains only her.

He comprehends every thought she ever has.

They're inner-connected more deeply then words and rings. Body and soul, they're individually indiscernible now.

The heart in her chest pumps her blood to his beat.

"Yeah." she says, her voice quiet. " Yeah, I'm wonderful."

Her mouth curves, as she runs her hand along his forearm, her fingers tracing the soft hair before she entwines his hands in hers.

"Good." he says,"According to this hot blond I know, I'm pretty wonderful, too."

Louder then before, she laughs, a pull of her diaphragm that fills her in the only way he can. And she feels his smile, a light vibration down the length of her back, her legs and the bed.

This is what she needs, and he knows it.

Because every part of his juvenile, three am humor makes her forget-in the horrid consequence of their nine to five life, that they wrote their destiny the day he went into that machine.

For all intents and purposes, it was the day they died.

But in these moments he never lets her ponder it, digresses her thoughts away from the auto-pilot of her dark place. Instead, with his touch and his kiss and his taste and his flesh, he reminds her that not everything has to be lost.

Somethings are found in the simplest of places.

Her euphoria hangs on the edge of his wit, his mind, and the bourbon nectar sweetness of his mouth that stakes it's claim on her skin.

The thrill of it all expands under her sternum, a swift implosion of her chest's core muscle that latches itself onto everything he means to her. And when she squirms under him, he groans again, his hot breath on her shoulder then above her, his hand trailing down to her ribcage as she turns to face him.

He's disheveled, stunningly so, his hair, a messy tuft of her impatient, roaming hands. It's a little longer now, then he usually wears it, but she likes the way if falls on his temples, short waves she brushes back now with a gentle sweep of her fingers. It makes him look younger, innocent almost if not for the beautiful lines of experience etched in his face. And after his hair, she traces his jaw, the stubble there tickling her finger-pads, a fine sandpaper that leaves her skin red and raw in all the hidden places he brands her.

Then it's his lips she finds, brushing the thin flesh with her thumbs, imagining again, the haste in them finding her own, swelling her own, fusing into her more promise then a kiss should hold.

And suddenly she sees a little boy with his eyes and a small girl with his hair, a future she's surrendered-in the moments when they've talked about a family-to impracticality and risk. There's too much danger now, in this chaotic, dark world. Still, she runs away with the thought, imagines him loving the child they want so badly, that two hearts crack in the silence of a rational choice.

In any other reality but this, one plus one would make three.

And it's now, that her quiet, has him raising a brow, a silent question indented between them, and when she meets his eyes, they're a striking pale-blue in the bleeding moonlight, thick lashed, and half-drawn, an introspection of desire, arousal, and the shallow absorption of a lingering exhaustion. And through it all, he smiles at her, an assuring grin that teases her with it's brilliance, that tells her no matter where she's at, she'll find his comfort here, at the end of her faraway place.

He's so painstakingly beautiful, in every way possible, it's stolen the air from her lungs.

"God, I love you."

She says it so strongly, so powerfully, the force of it drives her heart mad, fast flutters of kinetic incitement, an electric pull of his everything her whole body gives in to.

It makes his smile stretch, a captivating tug of his reaction that makes his teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. And his eyes turn dangerous, obsidian, straying away from hers to find her mouth.

It's carnal desire, this response, a predatory concentration that's descrying it's prey, that's derailing her heart's mania, turning it inside out, upside down and haywire, the way it always does when he's enthralled with her this way.

And he conquers her with it, pressing his lips to hers in a soft kiss, then he deepens it, as his hand finds her cheek, caresses the skin, his tongue tracing the edge of hers, sending every nerve-end there out downward, until the heat of her arousal is seizing spasmodically through every system under her flesh.

And she doesn't want him to stop, wants all of this to go further, the way it always does but this time he pulls back, leaves her body alone in it's maddening impatience.

He's breathing heavy, when he brushes a loose strand of hair from her face, concentrates again on her eyes and the love she safe-guards there.

"You'd better love me." he says, and she knows, from the twinkle in his stare, he's about to say something cocky. "I don't risk injury for just any reason."

He lifts his finger to her vision, and draws down his face, an over-dramatization of the small assault on his finger-pad, the invisible splinter he apparently has. This makes her roll her eyes, grin, press her palm to the one he has raised, and entwines their hands.

"Well I'm glad you'd risk it for me."

She tells him, and during a few, quiet seconds, under slats of the night's reaching white-light, his eyes change, dark to pale-blue again, a piercing emanation of his soul that buries into hers, weighs it down with the strength of his love for her.

Every night, this is the way he looks at her, in the quiet minutes just before dawn, when he's rustled her awake, and she opens her vision to the glorious sight of him. And just because he can, he tells her he loves her, and no matter what the day will bring, he'll love her even more by the end of it.

Admittedly, in their first days together, he was a self-interested cynic. But even then, he couldn't stop his quiet romanticism from showing his true colors.

And to this day, she's blinded by them.

This look now, is his wordless promise, the same one she saw five years ago, on the first night they spent together, and it's the same one she'll see until the sun dies away.

His gaze finds her collar now, and her clavicle, and when he takes his hand back, his fingers find the unbuttoned hem of her shirt, and they trail along her breast-plate before they stop, right above the swell of her breast. Then he cocks a brow, an animation of the same, smug grin that just appeared on his face.

"It's hard not to love you when you're wearing my shirt." he says, in a teasing tone. "Or when you're not."

Then slowly, carefully, he undoes one button, then two, lighting the skin under his path. But before he exposes her completely, he stops, again. He knows what he does to her, when he teases her like this, has her flirting with an edge he won't let her find, makes her want him, so viciously, every part of her burns like wildfire.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II:**

* * *

><p>This is the chase she adores, enjoys, craves with an abandon that makes her bones shake, and he knows it, because he's still grinning like an idiot when she swallows an excited breath.<p>

So to tease him in kind, she acts reposed, self-collected, because he prides himself on her loss of control.

Adjusting her rouse, she brings her left hand between them.

"You'd better love me." she tells him. "I don't wear this ring for just any reason."

It makes him look at her ring finger, then back, and there's nothing dangerous anymore in his eyes. Instead they're soft, genuine, so tender in their gray composition, it hollows her chest with it's power.

"Well I'm glad you're wearing it for me."

His voice is gravel, as he says it, because not a day goes by when he feels at all deserving of what he's found.

He's told her as much, in their second year together, in the moments when his past transgressions affronted his mind, when his guilt of living a selfish existence before he'd met her, steered his thoughts to the self-deprecation of a penitent man.

And a year later, those rare times would carry an even heavier burden, the one he'd attempted to wear for them both.

But she was right there with him, when they destroyed the world he was born in.

_We didn't have any other choice,_ she'd tell him, in the aftermath of it all, _As much as we'd wanted to, we couldn't save them both._ Then she'd press her forehead to his, fight back his despair with her comfort through her iron clad will. _We knew we couldn't save them both._

_But we're still here, our world is still here and everything will be okay now,_ and she'd try to smooth the ghosts from his face with her thumbs, caress away the pain of a destiny that evaded God's domain. _What matters is how we live our lives now. What matters, is that we still fight for all the right we believe in._

And then she'll kiss him, and he'll let her, and he'll remember that he's an optimist, because she makes him feel absolved somehow, under her touch.

She has the power to make him forget too.

And so, like she, he's accepted this life, has resolved to fix all the broken facets of this fate with restructured hope.

But still, he'll never accept how magnificent he is. And he's so undoubtedly wonderful it mesmerizes her inside out.

It's she who's unworthy of him.

And the thought arrests her, veins through her whole body with the brimming warmth of another kinetic affection, another spark in her blood to add to the fire that's burning her all over.

And because she can't help it, because she'll go insane anymore from his stalled hand-prints, she finds his mouth, and under the shirt, his left hand finds the tender skin of her breast. It makes her groan into the kiss, nip his lips with an urgency that arcs her back, her whole body subjugate to his friction, clinging to the thrill of his bare skin.

"It's hard not to love you when you're so damn amazing."

She says this through ragged breath and he catches it, tastes it on the end of his lips as he pulls back from her mouth.

"In that case, you'll have to love me forever."

There's that grin again, eating her alive with it's radiance, and the endorphins under her skin are reeling from the weight of him above her, from the way he's shifted his body to press into hers, balancing himself on hands to either side of her.

"I plan on it."

She whispers, her palm trailing over his chest, finding the racing drum there that makes time with her own.

And in response, he looks at her hand, as if it's directing him towards some inner muse. Then, after a few seconds, he looks at his own.

"I hope my splinter comes out before then."

He says this so seriously, and looks at her with eyes so worried, she can't help but laugh at his impressive guise. So she mocks him because of it.

"You know, you're not as cute as you think when you act like a baby."

Responsively, his brows shift, setting lower now as his eyes grow dark again, an obscure hue that lines gray with a thrilling navy ore. This concentration makes her body hum louder, glow underneath his heavy lidded allure.

"Call me baby one more time. I'd really like that."

This tease calls her back to their first day together, in a different lifetime with different circumstance, when they stood in a bright, empty hall and she threatened his pain-in-the-ass brash quip after he'd called her sweetheart.

It's imperceptible how his beautiful mind remembers these things.

"Give me a reason."

She says, her voice hushed, playful.

So she finds his calf with her foot, un-buries the skin and course hair there as she lifts up his pajama leg with her toes. Then she cradles his right side with her leg, her bare thigh pressing into his core as she arches hers, and the soft line of hair on his torso excites her abdomen, flirts of a pleasure her whole body's calling out for. And she feels his arms tense as he fights to remain composed.

Like she, he's completely unwilling to lose this game. So he lowers himself down, pushes his body into hers, the bare skin of his belly kissing the parts of hers he'd exposed. And the sensation steals away from her a quick breath before his lips find her neck, nipping the flesh there before his mouth leaves it hot, excitedly scratched by his unshaven cheek.

"Give me a reason to give you a reason."

He whispers this into her ear, his hot breath making her shiver as much as the dare.

So she tampers the impulses he's crazed, runs her hands down his sides, and her fingers relish his natural runners form, taking in the lean muscle under his heated skin. And the sensation makes him shiver, groan a little as she finds the hem of his sleep pants, and he bites down on his bottom lip.

Then swiftly, instantly, she's pinned him, has him falling to the bed with an '_oof_', before disentangling her legs from the clutch she tripped him up with. And to follow, she straddles him, dips the mattress in with her knees as she presses her lower half against his. She watches him swallow, hard, as his breath shallows, his eyes dangerously gray from below her, the dilation in his pupils telling her she's seconds away from caving him in.

Proud of herself, she raises a brow, braces herself on her arms before smiling down at him.

"Careful what you wish for, baby."

The whisper is another play on the day they'd met, and slowly, his mouth curves because of it, a line of perfect teeth peeking behind lips she's trying so hard not to plunder. Then his hand finds her cheek, and she feels the cool metal of his wedding band against her flushed skin.

And it isn't danger anymore in the gray, but something much more fragile, a gentle, pale blue emission of his awe, and it pushes into her with the way it softens his beautiful face.

This is his ideology of her, a wonder of the divinity he holds her to, and it catches in her chest, spurns out and into every crevice of her swollen heart.

"You're everything I could wish for."

Despite all the change he wants, all the terror of this world he'd wipe-away if he could, he finds peace in the chaos.

He knows it in her. And she obtains it through him.

And they won't dare ask for any other mercy because they don't need to.

The world completely stops in here.

For eons more, he gazes up at her, his admiration radiating through the threads of his soul, burrowing into her own until every breath she could take is lost to the depth of his love for her. So she leans against his hand, revels in the warmth of his palm before she leans down to kiss him, slowly, gently with the delicateness this moment calls for.

Then she runs her fingers through his hair, the silk curls turning to chestnut tussles before her hand finds his cheek, his course shadow rough under her palm, and her thumb-pad traces his bottom lip, absorbs what moisture she'd left on the flesh there.

"Prove it to me."

She says, her voice husk, as her eyes grow half-lidded, her desire reaming so intensely now, every facet of her body is screaming for every bare inch of him. So he lifts himself up, and it scoots her further onto him, sending a low, glorious pulse up her body, a hint of sexual release that's numbing her fingertips already.

This is how easily, he crazes her.

His hands are roaming up her bare thighs now, as his mouth finds her neck again, and he sucks on the skin there, so slowly, so perfectly that it's killing her.

"Say please." he demands, a heavy breath through his pillage, and as incentive, his hand slides up her side, lifts the shirt while the other holds her steady against him.

And it's when he leans closer, writhes his lower half under hers, the thrill threatens to make her delirious, imperceptive from the sensation that's begun melting her bones, and because there's too much fabric between them, too eager a throbbing in the part of her he's pressed against, her whole body tenses in protest to his covered skin. So she tries to find his drawstring, but his mouth finds her collarbone first, and his left hand ghosts over the side of her breast; his fingerprints, a vestige and an echo burned into her flesh.

And the thrill makes her push into him, her body tensing in anticipation, turning a dull pulse into a shooting ache that hitches her breath.

"Oh god, please Peter"

She manages, digging her intolerance into his shoulders, her fingers begging him to liberate every inch of her.

And so he smiles into her clavicle, in the smug, satisfied way that he does when he finds her breaking point, and right now she hates him for it because all she wants is every part of him melded into her.

Patience isn't a virtue. It's an excruciating injustice.

She's coming unglued, fully, as he tilts her up, slides his whole body against hers in a wave of hot flesh and agility. Then it's cool wind that hits her, as he tugs the shirt off her, a chill that contrasts the rampant radiation fueling her hunger, masking any coherency besides her own need.

And suddenly, her back hits the bed again, and it catches her breath, her diffuse inhalations swallowed by his own. And she feels his impatience matching hers now, the under-current of raw lust that's brimming under his skin, that's toppled both of them over in the kind of hot, electric desire they only know with each other.

Then he grabs her arms, pins them over her head so she can't touch him, makes her fingers scream out for the feel of him under them. And his slow grin is eating her alive because he wants her to suffer like this, wants her to want him so badly she'll die if she can't have him. And it's frustrating every hearted part of her, constricting her every muscle until all she can do is lay defenseless beneath him.

His eyes roam over her face, then her body, taking in every inch of her he'd just exposed, and to anyone else, anywhere else, this would be a self-conscious study, but to her, it's always invigorating, a tender, sensual excitement that shoots through to her toes. This is the moment he takes her in, beautifies her, commits to memory all the scars and freckles he knows now like the back of his hand. This is how he gives into her, and he's so close now, she can feel him collapse. Thick lashed, and heavy, his focus meets hers, a dewy gray capture that houses everything she'll ever want.

"How can I say no when you asked me so nicely?"

And so his hands slide down her arms, and he kisses her, with a passion borne of mutual desire, with a ravage rooted in need and comfort and adoration and promise. And she'll wrap herself up in him, in his scent and his sweat and his radiance and they'll share the rest of this morning like they will the rest of their lives; in the safe-heaven of familiarity, impassioned and intoxicated by the feel of each other.

In this dangerous, blinding city, this is the only road they know. The only one they'll make it by on.

_Our life now_, he told her, when they stood together at the start of this new world , _won't be easy, but it'll be worth it._

And he's absolutely right.

This love has no fragile seams.


End file.
